Sharad Pawar indicates nephew Ajit will be removed

New Delhi/Mumbai: NCP boss Sharad Pawar will meet party MLAs in Mumbai on Friday evening; they have asked him to take a final call on whether or not his nephew and senior party leader Ajit Pawar should go ahead with his resignation as deputy Chief Minister in the Congress-NCP state government. Sharad Pawar has indicated that he supports Ajit Pawar's decision to resign over allegations against him in a massive irrigation scam.

 "The issue of resignation of Ajit Pawar is over for the NCP," the Press Trust of India has quoted Mr Pawar as saying today. The NCP chief has repeatedly said over the last two days that Ajit Pawar decided to resign in consultation with him.

The element of uncertainty has been introduced by the party speaking in two voices in Delhi and in Mumbai, where Mr Pawar junior's many supporters have been insisting that the resignation must be withdrawn. Mr Ajit Pawar announced on Tuesday that he was quitting as he was fed up with the allegations being hurled at him. He also said he would not change his mind, but has demonstrated ever since that he commands immense clout within the party. Soon after he resigned, 19 NCP ministers immediately handed resignation letters to a party leader to show solidarity with Mr Pawar. 13 Independent MLAs who support the government also threatened to quit is he did not withdraw his resignation. And yesterday, the NCP's legislators formally asked him to reconsider his decision, even as they said that a final call would be taken Sharad Pawar.

The resignation has not been accepted yet by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan but in Delhi, the party's second-in-command, Praful Patel, too has stressed that Ajit Pawar's resignation must be accepted. He also rejected suggestions that Ajit Pawar's move aspired to unnerve his uncle as much as the Congress. "There is no question of any division within the NCP. It is purely led by Sharad Pawar. Ajit Pawar acted on his own conscience with the permission of the party president," Mr Patel said.

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The same point was made forcefully yesterday by Sharad Pawar, who said that all decisions on the future of the party and its ministers will be taken by what he called "senior leadership."

Mr Chavan is under pressure to table a white paper on the alleged 72,000 crore irrigation scam that led to the resignation of Mr Pawar, who was the state's Water Resources Minister of Maharashtra from 1999 to 2009; the latter says he is innocent but has quit because he is fed up of the accusations. Mr Chavan promised in July that he would present the white paper or financial statement to post-mortem the negligible returns on the massive expenditure made on irrigation in the last decade. The Irrigation Department remains with the NCP and the party says that inflation, modification of initial blueprints drove costs up, and that the state's irrigation capability increased by 0.5%.

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Sources say the NCP blames Mr Chavan and his team for leaking information against NCP ministers as part of his effort to clean-up a coalition that been held responsible for a series of scams, including siphoning flats meant for war widows and veterans in a Mumbai high-rise to politicians, bureaucrats and ineligible defence officers. On record, the NCP says it welcomes the white paper on irrigation as a chance to clear Ajit Pawar's name. "The Deputy Chief Minister thought he should step down and give full support to white paper," Sharad Pawar said. Privately, party sources say nothing could be farther from the truth. (Watch: NCP divided on Ajit Pawar's resignation?)

Activists and the opposition BJP charge Ajit Pawar with these broad categories: they say he sanctioned inflated contracts to private firms who gave him kickbacks; he rewrote rules to give himself near-total powers to approve escalating costs of dams and canals; when senior bureaucrats objected, pointing out that the consent of other officials was required, he ignored them.

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Activists say that one of the most flagrant instances of his abuse of power is that in three months - between July to August 2009- he cleared an increase of Rs 20,000 core as the expense on 38 projects in Vidarbha. The opposition alleges that because the state elections were scheduled for October that year, Ajit Pawar wanted to milk his last few months in office to collude with private companies. Vidarbha, an area ravaged first by drought and then by farmer suicides, had prompted special financial packages from the Prime Minister; activists say this made it easier to push through irrigation projects in the region.

Later that year, the NCP-Congress combine won the election; Ajit Pawar became Deputy Chief Minister in December 2010.

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